Sunday, March 27, 2011

Geocaching #2

A cool,cloudy day here in Maryland. No snow on the ground which was forecast for our area last night. Good thing, I'm through with the snow for the year, I'm glad the weather is starting to listen. Candy stayed home today so this was a solo hike in the deep woods of the Catoctin mountains. On this Sunday morn I was searching for two caches located in Cunningham Falls State Park Manor Area off Route 15 three miles south of Thurmont. It has the Scales and Tales Aviary, featuring a bald eagle with camping and the historic Catoctin Iron Furnace nearby. My first cache was hidden away on a hillside near the creek. When I first looked on my GPS receiver to find its location, it looked as though I had to cross the creek. So with much effort and a precarious balancing act, I did. Only to find that the creek takes a nice bend further upstream making my crossing unnecessary and doubly so as I had to recross back to my original side. Bob the Pathfinder!

Manging to keep my feet dry with my nimble athletic prowess, onward and upward I climbed,finally reaching my goal on a rocky overhang looking down on the roaring stream. My first "treasure" of the

day was a U.S. Army beret flash patch. After logging my find in the geocache logbook, I traded some swag I brought along, a neat toy that dramatically increases in size when water is added, for the unit patch. Geocaching is kid friendly, for the most part, so a lot of the "treasure" is for them,read -ME.

My treasure from the 2nd geocache find for the day,a Big Bear GeoCoin from California.

This is an example of some "adult" treasure to be found while geocaching. I will not keep this, because its purpose is to travel the world from one cache to another through the comings and goings of fellow geocachers like Candy and I. Once a geocoin is found, the finder logs on to Geocaching.com and records what is happening with the coin and also gets to see where it has travelled throughout its geocaching journey.

The next cache that we find will receive this geocoin, and add a few more miles in its travels from California.